Was FAU right to take stadium money from a prison company?

One thing is certain: More people are aware that Florida Atlantic University has a football team.

Artist's rendering of FAU's GEO stadium. (University handout)

News organizations from The Palm Beach Post to The Huffington Post to The New York Times to The Daily Mail in England carried items about FAU selling naming rights for its football stadium to the GEO Group, which runs prisons.

FAU’s football team has struggled, and the 30,000- seat stadium built two years ago in Boca Raton has struggled to attract fans and to attract a big-name corporate sponsor. GEO, which runs more than 100 prisons across the country, will pay $6 million over 12 years.

Many commentators have found the arrangement to be a source of amusement. The Post’s Frank Cerabino, for example, noted it is “perfectly natural to link a university with a prison. Both are large institutions that house adults for years, feed them lousy food and credit their time toward eventual release.”

More serious commentators have pointed out that FAU, which spent about $70 million to build the stadium, needs the money whatever the source. GEO’s money is as good as anybody else’s.

But critics note that GEO regularly has been accused of violating prisoners’ rights. Such accusations might go with the territory, but that’s one reason not to link FAU’s name with a corporation in the prison business.

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